Plastic-bottled refreshing beverages (sports drinks, mineral water, black tea, carbonated beverages, etc.) have been increasing recently. A plastic-bottled refreshing beverage is manufactured, for example, by molding PET or other raw material resin to form a bottle, filling the bottle with the beverage, and sealing the bottle by capping. Such a manufacture line must be controlled in an aseptic state because beverages consumed by people and bottles that contact mouths of people are handled in the line.
For example, there is known an aseptic filling equipment for plastic bottles that includes a continuous preform/bottle molding machine integrally including a preform molding machine and a bottle molding machine and performing a step of molding pellet resin to preforms and a step of blowing up and thereby molding the preforms to bottles in a continuous manner, an aseptic air conveyor conveying the bottles to a filling step, and a filling apparatus installed at a terminal end of the aseptic air conveyor (see, for example, Patent Document 1).